


Apology

by NahaFlowers



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi, Sadness, implied suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-17
Updated: 2017-09-17
Packaged: 2018-12-30 22:00:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12118089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NahaFlowers/pseuds/NahaFlowers
Summary: "You were magical together, you know," he says, looking up. "That's how I first fell for you. The way you both smiled, first at each other, then at me, as if letting me in on your own private joke. I think I knew, then, that I wanted to be yours, wanted to belong to both of you."After returning from theMaria Aleyne, James talks to Miranda about Thomas.





	Apology

**Author's Note:**

> Have this little sad thing I just wrote while procrastinating all my other writing.

It is the day after he returns from the  _Maria Aleyne_. He sends her back to her cottage, after telling her what she wants to hear - it is done, he is dead - for he must make some preparation on shore before he comes home to her, in the early hours of the next morning. She finds him in the kitchen, examining the portrait that usually remains hidden under a dust cloth, neither of them able to look at it since the news of Thomas's death. One letter, and the world was over. Mere paper and ink had been the death of them all.

"You were magical together, you know," he says, looking up. "That's how I first fell for you. The way you both smiled, first at each other, then at me, as if letting me in on your own private joke. I think I knew, then, that I wanted to be yours, wanted to belong to both of you."

It is probably the most James has said about Thomas since they left London, certainly the most since the news of Thomas's death. Miranda walks over to him, places a hand on his shoulder.

"We were so happy," she says, tears in her voice that won't be shed, not just yet.

"I know you were," says James quietly. "He told me once, he said - he said you saved him." He looks up at her in question.

Miranda nods, lump in her throat. She has longed to be able to talk about this, talk about Thomas, for so long, with James. He has not been able to stomach it, would snap at her, or say nothing at all, but his jaw would tighten and he would run out the room, and she would hear later that he had spent the night getting blind drunk in Guthrie's tavern. Still, this is a little too close to the surface, to what actually happened to Thomas, for Miranda to acknowledge completely. She found it hard even then, though perhaps her innocence had equipped her to deal with it better.   
"From his tyrant of a father, yes," she answers.

"From him, yes." James lets out a bitter laugh. "But he says you saved him from himself."   
James looks up at her again with the eyes of a boy, lost and wandering the moor, a drowning man screaming for help with only his eyes, and Miranda cannot rescue him, cannot even begin to answer the question that James is asking, the one they have both been asking themselves since Thomas was taken from them:  _Why_?

Miranda sighs and sits at the table, leaning over James to look at the painting, tracing her long-ago face, the fine silks and fabrics of someone else's life. She feels tired, suddenly, and old, in a way that she did not believe she was yet. She meets James's eyes and she knows he sees it too, knows in the way he looks guiltily away from her, a husband who has been away too often to recognise that his wife is becoming an old crone.

"I'm sorry," he whispers, "that I couldn't be enough." He is carefully not looking at her, a child who knows he has done wrong, that any punishment is well deserved.

"I am sorry," she says, and though her voice is quiet, she sees her next words red and burning upon James's cheeks, as though she has struck him, "sorry that I couldn't save you from yourself."

It is an ending, of sorts, a goodbye, a divorce. But more than anything, it is an apology, for the things they cannot be, for the things they are without. James traces his fingers over Thomas's painted face, not nearly as vibrant or sharp as real life, and sighs shakily, before picking it up and placing it back under the dust cloth, as if it had never been moved. Then he kisses her cheek and makes his way out of the cottage, and she doesn't see him again for another month. 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are love <3


End file.
